Rafat Arain is a Muslim woman, a business owner on Milwaukee’s south side and a motivational speaker.

She wears a hijab — because she chooses to.

And, no, she doesn’t need her husband’s permission to speak.

Female Muslim leaders like Arain spoke about their faith and the misperceptions that it oppresses women in the wake of Donald Trump’s remarks about Ghazala Khan, who stood silent and grief-stricken as her husband, Khizr, addressed a crowd at last week’s Democratic National Convention, honoring their Muslim-American son who died fighting in the U.S. Army in Iraq.

Trump, who is scheduled to campaign in Wisconsin on Friday, responded toKhizr’s Khan’s remarks by implying his wife was not allowed to speak as a Muslim woman.

‘Queens’ of the household

The stereotype of the silent partner comes from a first-world assumption that those living in poverty and patriarchy who are less likely to be educated are also, as a result, abused, Najeeb said.

“It’s a cherry-picking of the ills of a particular society. When you want to take the worst of a particular society and compare it to the best of your society, that’s not a fair comparison," she said, adding that violence and abuse exist in the United States, too, though Americans don't attribute issues in the states to Christianity.

Rafat Arain said she is the “queen” of her household. When she leaves the home, she’s the founder and owner of south side daycare Crescent Learning Center, a 27-year board member of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, an advocate for interfaith work and a motivational speaker at grade schools across the city.

She emigrated from Pakistan on Thanksgiving Day of 1976 at the age of 24 and raised her U.S.-born children to love their Muslim roots. She hopes they’re never forced to adhere to another religion.

Muslim culture traditionally values education and work for the man of a household, whereas women are valued as homemakers, Arain said. Because of it, those women historically wouldn’t have felt confident answering interview questions about their lives, rendering them apparently speechless.

Still, those same women ran the ship at home, Arain said — just as she does today.

Islamophobia mounted in the U.S. after the events of 9/11, leaders said. Arain saw her non-Muslim neighbors struggle to understand how she could be Muslim but so different.

“My neighbors had called me and said, ‘Rafat, you are a Muslim, and what they’re saying on the radio, that’s not how you are,’ ” Arain recalls. “It was an eye-opener for everyone.”

Milwaukee’s Muslim leaders blame national media for putting emphasis on the stereotype that they must remain silent.

“We capitalize on small cases where women don’t have a voice, and that’s the wrong way to do it,” Othman said.

Serving as a positive example

Muslim women in Milwaukee hope educating their neighbors and living their best lives will defy the stereotype that they’re voiceless, abused or oppressed.

Bushra Zaibak co-owns the chain of Hayat pharmacies across Milwaukee with her husband, Hashim. The Chicago native runs outreach as a council member at the Islamic Society of Milwaukee in Brookfield and shuttles her three children between soccer and volleyball practice.

Zaibak and her 15-year-old daughter, Janna, wear hijabs, a choice she said hands them the extra burden of making a positive example out of Islam and Muslim women to their surrounding communities.

“When people know who we are, it’s very, very easy for them to be saying, ‘that (stereotype) is not true,' ” she said.

Najeeb’s Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition on S. 27th St. runs workshops and lectures for the public and gives presentations about women in Islam to students, professionals and the general public, she said.

“We are not the first community that has been stereotyped and has had the mainstream try to sideline us and marginalize us, and unfortunately, I highly doubt we’ll be the last,” Najeeb said. “But what we can do is we can try as much as possible to change the narrative, so any community that comes after us does not have to continue to go through this.”

Najeeb said she thinks Trump could’ve taken Kahn’s speech as an opportunity to commemorate his son for his service. Instead, she said, Trump took “the lowest route possible.”

Despite fear that Trump could become the next president of the United States, the women say they’ve never been more proud to be American citizens.

“I’m a Muslim woman who did whatever I wanted to do. I got my PhD. I’m working outside. I’m doing public events,” Othman said. “I am the example.”